Garinim

What a busy week! The children have been hard at work preparing for Purim with lots of crafts and baking! Their industrious little fingers were hard at work drawing, peeling and sticking stickers, and folding and pinching dough! So many great, practical fine motor activities were worked into the necessary preparations. 

Of course, the children also had time to choose from the usual variety of classroom materials during work time. One popular practical life activity this week was spooning pom poms into a paint tray with a scoop. It took a lot of concentration to balance the pom pom on the scoop while transferring!

We hope everyone enjoyed their snow day on Tuesday! We had so much fun talking about what we did in the snow. Many children said they went sledding and some made snowmen or even snow forts! We had our own snowy fun on the playground on Wednesday- the children were excited and so helpful about building a snowman together as a class. We chose to use squeeze pouch tops for eyes, plastic gems for buttons, a tiny pinecone for a nose, and a big strip of red pepper for a yummy looking smile. The children helped by gathering the snow with (mittened) hands or shovels, and packing it firm so it would be sturdy. We were really proud of the result!

On Thursday morning at circle time, we got to have fun looking at all of the pictures from Ella's trip to Israel! The children were curious about how it was so warm there that her family could enjoy swimming, while we had snow on the ground here!! They were even fascinated by the airport and plane ride. Ella had so many fun adventures on her trip, we are so grateful to her family for sharing them with us!

On Thursday we also had music class again with Morah Dawn. This week she brought hand bells to demonstrate, and the children each had a chance to take their turn playing the "C" bell. They did a fantastic job following Morah Dawn's directions about how to strike and dampen the bell.

Judaica:

We had a very exciting week starting off with reading several books about Purim! We made groggers/ ra’ashan, crowns/keter, silly hats/koveem and made yummy hamentaschen! 

We have been practicing saying please and thank you in English and Hebrew at snack and whenever the children are in need of help.

As always we ended the week in the chapel learning about the the special clothes the Kohaneem had to wear in and around the Temple. The Anafim class made challah for us and it was delicious!

Shabbat Shalom!

Alim

Purim was the hot topic of the week.  We had so much fun preparing for next week.

 

On Monday, we decorated a party hat to get our festive spirits pumped for Purim.  We used a dot painting technique to decorate the paper hats.  The children really enjoyed this activity.

 

On Tuesday, we had a snow day. The kids shared the next day what they did on their snow day with their families. 

 

On Wednesday,  we worked in our classroom and during our circle time we had a puppet show explaining the story of Purim. We finished our special Groggers for Purim. Some children made the Groggers to be Queen Esther,  Haman or King Achashverosh.

 

On Thursday,  we had a visit from Morah Dawn.  She did a lesson with Musical Bells and the kids had so much fun.  We started decorating our Mishloach Manot bags too.

 

On Friday, we went down to the Chapel and enjoyed singing the Shabbat songs with everyone.  The Parsha was interactive and fun as well.  We started making Hamantaschen cookies in the classroom and rolled the dough out. The Shabbat box went home with Emily Tova. We are looking forward to hearing all about her adventures with "Shual", our classroom fox. Shabbat Shalom.  Have a great weekend.

Anafim

We just wrapped up a very exciting week!  On Monday we welcomed a new friend to our classroom, Lea. She will be joining us three days a week; mondays, wednesdays, and fridays.   All of the children were so excited to have her join us and are really working hard to show her the ropes of our classroom. 

We have been spending this week talking about the upcoming holiday of Purim.  We enjoyed a stick puppet show of the story of Purim, and spent the week reading many different versions of the story along with books about people celebrating the holiday.  The children have been learning all about the different characters of the story; Queen Esther, King Ahashveros, Mordechai,  and mean Haman.  

To help get in the spirit of things we decorated our very own party hats using markers.  Many of the children also enjoyed joining in on the school spirit days this week to help with the excitement for Purim.  

We all enjoyed our snow day on Tuesday and the children came in on Wednesday with so much excitement about the snow!  Everyone had a chance to talk about what they did on the day off during circle time.  

Wednesday and Thursday we were so busy creating groggers, decorating our mishloach manot bags, making challah dough, braiding the challah and making hamantaschen dough.  Whew!  

This week we had a bit of different visitors for Shabbat.  We showed and introduced 

Nurse Ericka to our Shabbat chapel routine, as she was helping in our classroom Friday morning.  In the chapel this week we heard about the next bit of the Torah.  This week it was all about who was allowed into the Mishkan and what they needed to wear to enter.  Morah Lana invited several children to the front to help and show off how they were dressed.  Once back in the classroom we said goodbye to Nurse Ericka and welcomed Mandi in to eat our challah and grape juice with us.  It was such a wonderful shabbat experience to be able to share these special preschool moments with them.

Once we had finished our Shabbat festivities, we rearranged our classroom and moved a bunch of tables together and worked on making our Hamantaschen from the dough we had made on Thursday.  The children enjoyed having a chance to cut out circles, fill them with cherry, apricot and raspberry filling, and then fold them into triangles.  We had a couple that turned out like tacos, that the children all got a great laugh over before we fixed them up into triangles.  

This sure was a busy fun filled week and we can’t wait to celebrate Purim together next week. Have a wonderful weekend.

 

Keshet

I’m not going to lie… this week was mostly about Purim; designing and painting the Shushan mural, story telling of the Megillat Esther, a few other Purim stories, creating props, practicing Purim songs, acting out the story, lots of laughs, loads of fun and finally, sharing this all with our families on Thursday morning! The Keshet Purim Players presenting the story of Brave Queen Vashti standing up for her (womens!) rights, King Achashverosh and his helper, Haman (thank you Lior for stepping up and taking on this role), Mordechai and his kind and beautiful niece, Esther, all the ‘beautiful women of Shushan’, the palace guards, oh, and ‘the king’s horse’. Even after enthusiastic practicing, we  forgot to ‘neighhhhhh’ !! 

Everyone had so much fun! Thanks to our full house awesome audience!

Following this, we made Hamantaschen dough and cut, rolled and assembled our Hamantaschen, which you’ll get to sample on Purim (if your dear children save one for you ;) 

In between we did journal entries; a page on ‘the beginning of the Purim story’, and the next day… ‘the middle part of the Purim story’ and the third entry … ‘and then…’ 

Fortunately it snowed one day in between and they wrote about their snowy day at home. 

Friday we squeezed in a time for grogger making and decorating and this all comes together just in time for Purim day on Tuesday. Looking forward to the Montessori staff dress up reveal, and mostly, seeing what these crazy kids (and creative parents) put together - no pressure ;) Have fun, it’s still ADAR. 

Among all the Purim fun we have been having we are learning songs in Hebrew for the holiday (only some of which you heard at our show!) We introduced a new Bingo game of Hebrew letters and vowels and the children are really starting to recognize even the more complicated combinations.  Some of the students have finished their Hebrew books, while others are very close. They each get so excited when they reach the end, it’s very sweet. 

On Thursday, each child made Yoav a card for him to take with him. We also sat in a circle and shared what we each loved about Yoav and what we will miss about him. It was very sweet. 

See this week’s photos here https://photos.app.goo.gl/1JT7gnGQRUpdamfZ7